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Monthly Archives: August 2008

I may be slow to the party, but there’s a great post on Tyson Chandler at Hornets247. Ryan Schwan compares the perception on Chandler to reality, namely that Chandler is a poor defender because he doesn’t have a high block shot rate and that the half court offensive is 4 vs 5 with him on the floor. Schwan finds Chandler to be an “excellent defender” because of his agility & length to alter shots, and a valuable contributor on offense due to his excellent pick & roll game and strong rebounding. Definitely worth the read.

The United States finished up the pool round with a demolition of Germany. The US had already clinched the top seed in their group, so this game did not technically “matter,” but you wouldn’t notice by the way they absolutely destroyed Germany, using all of their weapons (outside shooting, defense, athleticism, even the inside presence of Dwight Howard!). Since it wasn’t even all that close, let’s look at some other interesting basketball stories of the day:

The United States finished off the first round of games in impressive style, going undefeated and destroying Spain by thirty-seven points (their largest margin of victory yet!). Once the threes started dropping, Spain knew they were in for a long day at the office.

This was the United States’ first big test, and the passed it easily (although certainly still with some room for improvement). It truly did appear as though Coach K spent all his free time (and a good deal of his official time for Team USA) developing a way to beat Greece, as he came up with basically the perfect defense and his cadre of athletic players (there is more athleticism on Team USA’s bench than on most other teams) to execute the dominant defense, which was just amazing to see, as Team USA smothered Greece in this statement game.

Another bad showing from behind the arc, but the United States once again used their overpowering force to basically bully a weaker opponent via the fast break. Now we get to see how this strategy does against a team like Greece, which can actually push back.

The first Olympic game of the so-called “Redeem Team” (it is a cheezy nickname, but I have to say, I don’t think it is half-bad) ended up as a success, as the United States really blitzed China on defense and on the fast break to get a series of spectacular dunks that really got the crowd excited (it is a bit weird to see a Chinese crowd go ballistic seeing Americans dunk on Chinese players, but whatever floats their boat). It was a fun game to watch, but there are definitely some worrisome aspects of USA’s game (or as worrisome …continue reading